How Much Should I Be Saving? The 30% Rule

The other day I gave a talk to my residents on Investing 101. Before I could talk about investing, we had to discuss some basics of personal finance, including budgeting and preventing large lifestyle inflation after finishing training. One of the most important questions that we covered was answering the question, “how much should I be saving“?

Today’s post is bent towards answering this question, particularly when you are feeling the stress from your personal finances. In that situation, what’s the cause? And how much should I be saving?

The Big Picture

Let’s keep this simple. Money can dramatically impact most relationships.

The first time I witnessed this was when a couple – some of my friend’s parents – had starkly different views on finances. The husband could not have been more frugal, and the wife enjoyed spending the money that they made.

They were doing well financially by most standards, but they still experienced an enormous amount of financial stress because they had different views on expectations and reality as it related to finances.

We all know the feeling – when finances put a strain on our relationships with those that we love.

The question is whether this feeling of stress is caused by overspending or by being so frugal that we aren’t just trimming the fat, but have now sunk the knife deep to the marrow.

The 30% Rule can help us figure out what’s causing our issue.

WAR and the 30% Rule

I don’t talk about war much on this blog, but today it’ll be necessary as I introduce you to a different kind of WAR – your Wealth Accumulation Rate (WAR).

In simple terms, your WAR is the % of your AGI spent towards building wealth.

A Case Study

For example, for someone making $250,000 gross per year, a 30% WAR would amount to $75,000 each year going towards paying off debt or investing. For the physician on the traditional path, this kind of WAR will typically result in financial independence before the age of 60.

Of course, the higher the student loan debt burden that exists, the more likely it is that a person will need to shift their WAR percentage towards paying off debt.

Hopefully, this person is also applying The 10% Rule towards their bonuses and promotions to help increase their WAR, which will allow them get to their goals even faster!

**Edit: Debt being paid off when calculating your WAR should be “Good debt” such as a mortgage or student loan debt. As barelybarefoot points out in the comments below, it should probably not include your consumer debt like that tesla you are financing. Increasing your WAR in this way prevents wealth accumulation.

How Much Should I Be Saving? The 30% Rule

Obviously, the higher your WAR the better – as long as your life is tolerating it.

Aggressively building wealth to the extent that it negatively impacts your wellness may not be worth it. On the other hand, if your WAR isn’t high enough, your wellness will also be impacted as you limit your future choices and fail to obtain financial independence.

How much you should be saving can be directly answered after you calculate your WAR. And, if the thought of saving stresses you out, then you need to figure out if you have a spending problem or a frugality problem.

After you determine whether your WAR is above or below 30%, you put yourself into one of two camps.

Less than the 30% Wealth Accumulation Rate

You are putting less than 30% of your adjusted gross income waging WAR and yet you are still feeling financial stress.

This means you likely need to build something I like to call financial resilience.

Life can be full of tough decisions, but if you are suffering from financial stress (not related to other happenings in your life) and you are at a less than 30% WAR, you likely need to find your frugal gene and express it.

Speaking of genes, are your other jeans all designer brands? Are you paying two brand new car payments? Did you buy the big house (or are contemplating it)? Do you live in a high cost of living area?

Maybe, its time to make lifestyle changes if you are feeling financial stress with a WAR of less than 30%.

More than the 30% Wealth Accumulation Rate

If, however, you are feeling the tight constraints of your budget and you are saving over 30% of your AGI, you may need to question the extent of your frugality. Is it cutting too deeply?

For example, my friends parents mentioned in the introduction:

Their WAR was likely much >30%, but this was clearly negatively impacting their marriage. This is simply not worth it. Becoming Financially Independent and Retiring Early (FIRE) is important, but it should not be an all consuming goal that prevents you from living a life well lived.

Who cares how big your bank account is if you aren’t enjoy life?

Take Home

Calculating your WAR and using The 30% Rule should serve as a guideline for discussion and thought. You can either adjust your spending or adjust your WAR to improve your wealth and wellness.

I think a 30% WAR is a pretty reasonable goal, but I need to show some grace and recognize that not everyone’s situation is the same.

Regardless, this is one of tools I use to consider how I am doing in my mission to obtain both wealth and wellness.

Am I investing enough? I don’t know… What is your WAR? Does it impact your lifestyle negatively? Are you feeling financial stress with a WAR more than or less than 30%? What do you think?

Thanks! I thought it was useful because I find in my conversations both in forums and in real life, people swing to both sides on the pendulum. I thought of this tool as a guide to a happy medium or at least a starting point for thoughtful discussion on the topic! Appreciate the comment!

Interesting post TPP. I think folks might make their WAR % artificially inflated if they add paying down all debts to this. Perhaps it’s save, invest and paying down ‘good’ debt? Or debt that appreciates? Wouldn’t like them patting themselves on the back for buying that Tesla with 2.9% financing because $1200/mo going to paying down debt. Do I include extra mortgage payments in WAR? Or just payments to principal? IN worried I’m fudging my WAR%!

I suppose I should have specified “good debt” such as mortgage debt and student loan debt. Consumer debt certainly wasn’t the aim of calculating your WAR! Like all things, I guess it needs to be seen in the right light. I might go back and add a specification that it needs to be “good debt.”

The number 1 problem for retirees (really, all Americans) is that they haven’t saved enough, which is a tough problem to solve when you’re nearing retirement. WAR is a great way to think about it when you’re young and including debt service can be extremely motivating for those who have large student loan debts. I really like the idea of financial resilience. 🙂

In general, I think it can serve most Americans to be more frugal. At least more mindful of their spending. Unfortunately, most people don’t realize that more spending doesn’t necessarily lead to increased happiness. The best balance is to spend according to your values. That way you can freely spend on things that truly matter, and be frugal on things that don’t.

I love your WAR acronym. It’s so clumsy to talk about savings rate plus paying down mortgage, etc… rate. WAR just rolls off the tongue.

I’ll need to calculate my WAR, it’s probably close to 30%. My savings rate is just over 20% and I’m thinking that I’ve put at least another 10% towards extra mortgage payments.

I like your 10% rule as well. I call the “best financial hack your not using.” For me, any “extra” money that comes along gets allocated three ways. First 1/3 for extra mortgage payments. Second 1/3 for college savings. Third 1/3 for spending. Same idea and it works very well.

Great post with discussion on WAR. I’d not heard the term before but understood the concept immediately.

My wife and I are attempting to accumulate wealth while we’re young and our expenses are low. She’s in her final year of residency and will begin practicing this coming summer. We’d like to buy our first place together in the next two to theee years and understand that requires a healthy savings/WAR rate.

In the meantime, we’re managing to max out our retirement accounts and allowing compounding interest to do the heavy lifting for our retirement needs.

The decision to buy a house is a really big deal. It’s the biggest decision that impacts most physicians’ financial situation the most. Using the first two to three years to get things in order before that decision is almost always a great idea. I don’t know anyone who regretted waiting to buy a house later, but do know a bunch who wish they had waited til farther out from training.

I love the WAR concept! We are putting extra money to work (after maxing all the typical withholdings) by splitting it between taxable accounts and paying off our mortgage more quickly. This is the balance we chose between the age old debate of pay down mortgage or invest. However, it was always felt slightly off to include the extra principal paydown in savings rate. WAR takes that ambiguity away. Now, I can confidently say our WAR is approaching 50% without feeling like I’m being a bit inaccurate!